ChatGPT Planning for *.*

Using ChatGPT for Planning?ANYTHING!!!

I have written so many plans in my career, so, so many plans. I would say I am a planning expert, and one of the things that are hardest for new planners when they are just getting started is just… getting started. Well, it turns out that according to ChatGPT, it can help me plan a variety of different things; it says:

Now I was a bit skeptical and pleasantly surprised when I had it plan out a software project for developing a Discord bot. The details of those prompts and outputs are below. I have seen similar results planning a trip to Japan, buying a new car, going on a road trip, planning a party, etc.

It is worth noting that a number of the items on the list will start out vague and require some smart prompting to get good results, as this was required to get a solid first draft of a task list for building a Discord bot.?

Fine tuning these prompts took multiple drafts, over ~ 1 hour.

Noting that the biggest value in having ChatGPT help you plan is that it can get you an SFD (shitty first draft).?

To start, we need to layer in context to prime our session for effective results. So start with a guiding statement after you have entered your universal priming prompt input. You do have a universal priming prompt , right??

Prompt #1

I need you to interview me and gather the details for engineering tasks, before we start outline the different questions, topics, and areas you would ask about. And speculate on the format for the end deliverable representing the plan of record for the tasks.?

Now that we have some initial state built up let's go into an interactive mode to keep exploring the problem space, I create more context for what follows by giving ChatGPT a role in the conversation.

Prompt #2

Can you go into an interactive mode and act like my project manager??

Prompt #3

Sure, the project is to build a Discord bot. I need to think through the many different tasks I need to execute to do it. I'd appreciate your help in doing that. We talked before about the different kinds of questions to ask, can you reference those??

Prompt #4

Oh good idea, walk me through documenting each sub task. I could use the help thinking about the different tasks one at a time, and break them up into sub tasks might make sense. How should we proceed?

Prompt #5

Ok, let's break those tasks up into smaller subtasks even further.?

Prompt #6

To nicely document these tasks, perhaps a markdown table could be used. What would be a really good format to document the above tasks, subtasks, and other details?

It has estimates! And they are not crazy; more on that in a minute.?

Prompt #7

Ok, that is great. Should we also include tasks for better identifying the problems we want to solve with the Discord bot, validating those problems, and then exploring potential solutions?

Prompt #8

Lay those tasks out in a new table for the product management team, use the same format as the other table.?

Prompt #9

OK, please collate and combine the tasks into a single CSV file, then write out that file. Be sure the escape the commas in the text too.?

This will give you a CSV formatted output you can easily pull into your spreadsheet of choice; you could easily import this plan into Trello or other tools via CSV upload or using their APIs. I skipped showing you the CSV output, you know what that looks like.

Initially, to view the tasks, I pulled them into a Google sheet, then split into columns on commas. ProTip: be sure to ask ChatGPT to escape commas so the split will work properly if you have commas in the planning text.

The estimates are not crazy; in fact, they are not too far off what I would expect for someone new to an area. And more so, they strike me as roughly correct in terms of the magnitude of efforts from one task vs another. Frankly, these are incredible engineering estimates for a SWAG by a LLM.?

Notice, that ChatGPT also identified dependencies and mapped those, I did not ask it to do that. Now clearly, this is an imperfect plan, it is going to be missing tasks, and critical details, and therefore no one should blindly follow it exactly. But as a place to start, as a SFD that took an hour to create in an area you have never worked in, well it is really fantastic. Now you can edit this plan, add, subtract, and update the tasks. You are not starting with a blank canvas.?

Key Take Aways

• ChatGPT can create detailed, directionally correct plans for nearly any project.?Read that again.
• Producing an SFD is a key way to use this tool.?This is true of most usages. Editing, rewriting, and pulling in other sources is key to product good work product.
• Focus on layering context by asking questions and giving directions.
• As always, be clear, specific, and direct with your questions or directives.

What else could you use this for? Let me know in the comments :-)